Building Sustainably With Wood
Building Sustainably With Wood The ultimate green building material
Wood is the ultimate green building material. It can be produced on an endlessly renewable cycle that protects the environment and sustains rural communities. Its production consumes less energy, emits fewer greenhouse gases (GHGs), releases fewer pollutants and generates less water pollution compared with other building materials such as steel and concrete. It’s also safe, durable and beautiful.
Wood products are increasingly recognized for their sustainable benefits, including carbon storage. Our wood products help our customers meet sustainable building objectives because they are eligible for credits under major green building standards such as LEED®, Green Globes® and the National Green Building Standard™. And by leveraging our software solutions, ÌÇÐÄvlgoÍøÒ³°æ customers can maximize the efficient use of this renewable product and reduce jobsite waste.
Forests are a remarkable renewable resource. When managed sustainably, they can last forever while also providing wood products that are essential for everyday life.
Using wood products from sustainably managed forests is an effective tool for carbon sequestration and long-term carbon storage.
Meeting Green Building Requirements
Our wood products help our customers meet important sustainable building objectives and are eligible for credits under major green building standards.
Sourcing Responsibly from Forests
We source wood from many different types of forest owners, but regardless of who we source timber from, we ensure it comes from responsibly managed forests.
Wood Products Have Low Embodied Carbon
Wood products have significantly lower embodied carbon than steel and concrete.
Helping Builders Reduce On-site Waste
Our innovative construction techniques can help reduce jobsite waste and construction time.
WOOD IS A RENEWABLE RESOURCE
After we harvest trees in our sustainably managed working forests and make them into a range of essential wood products, we replant the forest and start the forest growing cycle again. All the forests we own and manage are certified to the SFI® Forest Management standard, which requires that we manage our forests sustainably. To ensure we never harvest more than our forests grow, we harvest only 2 percent of our forests each year on average and reforest 100 percent of the land we harvest.
While it may seem counterintuitive, . Strong markets for wood products create an incentive, especially for smaller landowners — who harvest less frequently — to replant after harvesting and keep forests forested rather than converting them to other commercial uses. This creates an endless cycle of timber production and ensures that when trees are harvested, a new forest begins to grow in their place.
Keeping forests as forests also maintains other critical ecosystem benefits, including wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities, water filtration, carbon storage and more.
SOURCING RESPONSIBLY FROM FORESTS
We source about 40 percent of the wood used to make our products from our own Sustainable Forestry Initiative®-certified forests, about 20 percent from other certified landowners, and the remaining 40 percent from noncertified landowners — typically small, family-owned forests. Whether it comes from a certified forest or not, all the wood used to make our products is from legal, noncontroversial and responsible sources.
It is our long-standing policy and practice to ensure that we, and all our wood suppliers, comply with all laws, and that our procurement practices do not cause or encourage destruction of forest areas at risk of loss from unsustainable forest management practices. While avoiding illegal and controversial sources of wood is important, it is just a first step. That is why we certify all our manufacturing facilities to the SFI® Fiber Sourcing or Certified Sourcing standards. These standards ensure we implement effective risk assessment and due diligence programs and work to expand the use of sustainable forest management practices on non-certified forests.
Whether we buy wood from a large landowner, like us, or a small family forest owner, we work with our suppliers to ensure they have access to sustainable forestry information, use best management practices to protect water quality and employ loggers trained in sustainable forestry practices. Beyond working with our direct suppliers, we monitor our wood supply area to ensure sustainable forestry practices are followed, and we support logger training and landowner education to address gaps and reinforce focus areas.
For customers seeking assurance that the wood in their products originated from a certified forest, we maintain SFI and PEFC Chain of Custody certification at select mills. This certification allows us to provide customers with a verified claim that the wood products they buy from us come from certified, sustainably managed forests. This level of transparency and traceability is often utilized in green building programs as a proof point for sustainable forest management.
Our SFI and PEFC certificates verify for our customers, community and investors that we manage our forests sustainably and source wood from legal, non-controversial and responsible sources.
Business Integration
Our Wood Procurement Policy guides the responsible sourcing of wood throughout our company.
Business Integration
Responsible Sourcing by the Numbers
We update and share data annually about our fiber sourcing.
Blog Post
WOOD PRODUCTS STORE CARBON
As trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the air and store it in their trunks, limbs, roots and leaves. When we harvest trees at their peak of growth and turn them into wood products such as lumber, we lock much of that carbon into the product and replant new trees to store even more carbon. It is an ever-increasing cycle that continues to pull more and more carbon out of the atmosphere over time. On average, the wood products we produce each year store more than 10 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent over 100 years. That is equal to the emissions generated by the electricity used in 2 million homes in one year (based on the ).
Review our Carbon Record to learn more about the powerful contribution we make to mitigating climate change by sequestering and storing carbon in our forests and wood products.
Energy Efficiency in Our Wood Products Business
Learn about our detailed and proactive approach to managing energy use at our manufacturing and distribution facilities.
WOOD PRODUCTS AND EMBODIED CARBON
Independent life-cycle assessments confirm that wood products are manufactured using significantly less energy than the mining and manufacturing processes to produce many other building materials. In fact, researchers have found that buildings made primarily of wood have significantly lower embodied energy — a measure of all the energy required to make a product — compared to steel and concrete.
Separate studies published in the  and the , as well as findings from the , have determined that houses and buildings constructed with wood have between 17 to 58 percent lower embodied energy than those framed with steel, and between 16 to 55 percent lower embodied energy than those made primarily with concrete. For builders and architects who want to contribute to the decarbonization of the building sector, increasing the use of wood products in buildings is a win-win solution. If you are new to the embodied carbon conversation,  a²Ô»å  provide helpful resources for gaining a deeper understanding of embodied carbon and the benefits and logistics of building with wood.
We partner with our national trade associations, and , to create and publish industrywide environmental product declarations (EPDs), which include embodied carbon values — and other environmental performance values — for our core wood products.
MEETING GREEN BUILDING REQUIREMENTS
Our wood products are eligible for credits under major green building standards, such as LEED®, Green Globes® and the National Green Building Standard™, and can help our customers meet important sustainable building objectives, including LEED requirements for , environmental product declarations, low-emitting materials and more.
Today, many of our wood product and software solutions are .
To help you understand how our products align with the many different green building program requirements, we publish ²¹â€¯r±ð±è´Ç°ù³Ù summarizing how our wood products fit into numerous green building programs.
Our products are covered by industrywide EPDs hosted on the  and websites. These EPDs were developed in compliance with 14025:2006 and ISO 21930:2017.
HELPING BUILDERS REDUCE WASTE
Our innovative construction techniques, such as NextPhase® Site Solutions, can reduce jobsite waste and construction time by optimizing design, material cuts and assembly. Builders using NextPhase can also receive credits under major green building standards, including the National Green Building Standard and LEED for Homes.
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